Recently, as a mobile appliance such as a cellar phone equipped with a camera has been introduced, still images and moving pictures can be taken regardless of time and location.
In addition, for high-resolution and high-quality photographs, the performance of the camera has been gradually improved, and a camera module having an auto-focusing function, a close-up shot function, and an optical zoom-in/zoom-out function has been mounted.
In order to ensure the performance of the mounted camera module, the size of the camera module must be enlarged.
However, if the camera module, is enlarged, mounting the camera module on the mobile appliance is difficult when taking into consideration the design of the mobile appliance, and the mobile appliance represents the limitation in performance thereof.
Meanwhile, a lens may be fabricated by using an apparatus for fabricating the lens. In other words, the lens may be fabricated by filling a liquid-phase curing material into the lens including lens modules.
When the lens is fabricated, in order to inject the liquid-phase curing material, an injection part used to inject the liquid-phase curing material and a discharge part used to discharge the liquid-phase curing material are connected to each, lens, module.
A curing process is performed after the liquid-phase curing material has been injected or discharged through the injection part and the discharge part. When the curing process is performed, the injection and discharge parts are not cured, but only the liquid-phase curing material filled in the lens module is cured.
In this case, the phase of the liquid-phase curing resin filled in the lens module is changed from a liquid phase to a solid phase, so that the liquid-phase curing resin may be contracted. The liquid phase-curing resin filled in the injection and discharge parts, which are not cured, may be filled in the contracted part. Accordingly, when the lens is fabricated, a de-center phenomenon may occur.
The de-center phenomenon occurs when the center of one curved surface of a lens is mismatched with the center of the other curved surface of the lens. Accordingly, the performance of the lens may be degraded. In other words, even though the center of the top surface of the lens must be aligned in line with the center of the bottom surface of the lens, when the upper and lower portions of the lens are cured at different speeds in the step of curing the lens by irradiating light or heat in the middle of a molding process for the lens, or the shape of the lens module is erroneously formed, the upper portion of the lens may be offset from the lower portion of the lens, so that the performance of the lens may be degraded.
Therefore, an apparatus for fabricating a lens, a method of fabricating the lens, and the lens, which can reduce and/or prevent the de-center phenomenon when the lens is fabricated, have been required.